Book review: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

By Colin Steele

June 5, 2015 — 11.45pm

Seveneves By Neal Stephenson Harper Collins. $32.99.

Neal Stephenson has made an impact with every novel published since his groundbreaking dystopian debut Snow Crash in 1992. Later novels such as Cryptonomicon, Reamde, and Anathem have also made an impact through their physical size. Seveneves runs to form in this respect, with just over 850 pages. As one critic once said, never expect "nerdy novellas from Stephenson".

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson.

Seveneves begins dramatically, "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason ". Stephenson has said in an interview, "I wanted it to be a book about something really bad happening that we just had to deal with, without a lot of thinking about the whys and wherefores". Humanity has to deal with its impending, almost total destruction, given that the "hard rain" of the lunar meteorites will last for millennia, and then somehow ensure the survival of the race into the future.

Cue here Dr Dubois Harris, a black astrophysicist, who strides the global media scene to temporarily assuage public fears. Stephenson has acknowledged that Harris's character is based in part on American astrophysicist and celebrity science communicator, Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, who will be the star speaker on August 23 at the Australian National University in National Science Week. Ask him to sign Stephenson's book!

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The eventual deaths of seven billion people largely takes place offstage. Stephenson focusses instead on the politics and scientific resources needed for a small group to survive on the Cloud Ark evolving from the enlarged international space station. Women predominate, partly "for biological reasons", with a "DNA sequence stored on a thumb drive". Stephenson adds, however, that "not all of these women, though turnout to be totally morally upright. In fact, some are incredibly flawed, if not downright evil".

After 560 pages, the narrative takes a dramatic turn, with a long epilogue set 5000 years in the future. This necessitates some rapid history backfilling, but it does enable Stephenson's scientific imagination to run wild and especially to extrapolate genetically from the original "seven eves".

Stephenson once told me in an interview for The Canberra Times, that he never writes the same book twice. Seveneves reaffirms that tradition, although it would have benefited from more ruthless editing. Seveneves blends many aspects of science, especially astrophysics, robotics and bio-engineering into a flawed, but undoubtedly epic, SF narrative. Stephenson is a science geek extraordinaire.